The comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1884-1916, 1887-08-04
A Blast From "a Furnace.
BY COLONEL p. DOMAIN.
From the Arkansaw Traveller.


in the shade in st. Louis and Pitts
burg, and still higher in Little Rock,
Nashville and Chattanooga. Street
car mules and horses falling as if dead
in their tracks. Even Chicago, the
boasted great interior summer resort
OF the new world, fricasseeing her
boodlers and anarchists, wheat-corner
gamblers and pork lords in their own
grease and villany, Ninety degrees
of red holiness at midnight in many
places. Sweltering and sweat all over
the country.
The heat, the heat, the terrific, roasting, sum
mer-sickening heat.
The pavements are all kissing hot, the sky
above is brazen,
And every head as good as dead the sun can
set his rays on;
The lean, lank-looking skeletons go stalking
pale and gloomy;
The fat, like red-hot fryingpans, send hotter
fancies through me,
wake from dreams of polar ice, on which
I've been slider,
Like fishes dreaming of the sea and walking
in the spider"
Wh-e-e-ew! whew Fucker your
mouth by three weeks diet of alum
or green persimmons, and whistle
that. Whe-e-ew! whew! Blue blazes
of the great Sahara Nebuchadnezzar's
fiery skillet; Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego flaming birthstone showers
of Sodom and Gomorrah; Vesuvius,
Htna, Stromboli and Popocatapetl I;
bubbling witch-caldrons, and exasper-
ated bald-hornett' nests; smoking,
sizzling, scorching home of the great
patron saint of the most of American
statesmen and statesmanship-how
hot it is (Unless the people speedily
begin to send better men to munich
pal, state and national legislatures, it
will soon be dog-days all the year in
this country.) Hot! So hot that my
blood boils within me till my hat
dances on my head like an infuriated
teakettle lid. / can hear my soul
sloshing around like a teacupiul OF
scalding greace every time move.
Oh, for a chunk of the worlds cold
charities to slip into my seething
bosom before my gizzard is totally
cooked Oh, for the bleak winds OF
adversely to fan my blistering brow
And oh, for chance to dip my tongue
of parched and cracking leather into
the dark, chill waters of the dreaded
Jordan. Oh, for the frost of years and
the SHOWS of old age. Oh, for the
touch of an icy hand, or the freezing
glance Of naughty damsefs eye
Oh, for fower-garden OF polar bear:
and a sunless grove of Alaska icebergs
Oh, for cave in Kamschatka, a hun
dred-and-sixty-acre homestead o
Spitzbergen frigidity, an icicle-gem
med grotto in the basement story o
the aurora-borealis. Oh, for a blut
nose and a pair of frost-bitten heels
Oh, for anything cool and cooling
from a mint julep or a teeth-rattlinl
tartan ague to cup OF cold poison
or a section of Japanese frozen hell
, Hot Talk of Indian widows con
; sumed on their husbands iunera
piles, instead of drawing their ten
thousand-dollar life-insurance policies
and marrying other fellows in si
months, as they do in more enlighten
ed lands. Talk of hapless heather
babes devoured by Moloch's horri
flames, instead of being reared to spol
scanty side-whiskers, eyeglasses, bot
tailed coats and crape-banded plu
hats, paniers, patent inflatable gunjur
y rubber bustles, dyed hemp chignon
Grecian-bend heels and Gainsboroug
d hats, as in Christian realms. Talk {
) missionaries, tender and toothsom
+ barbecued by the dusky descendan
= of the Queen of Sheba on the banks
G the gently rolling Zambesi Or tt
s sportive Niger. Talk of Nero illum
o mating Rome with Standard -Oil-con
T. pany- kerosene soaked Episcopalian
! Talk OF pagan hectacombs and hol
IS caustS. But, psh-sh-sh-shew! The
!, all dwindle into the little end of not
Is ing, whitfield down and polished {
d with pulverized rotten-stone. He
n in free America-free for all b
c. Americans--in the last quarter of Il
le nineteenth century, amid all the bla
m of gospel light and liberty and Il
e. glare of anarchistic bombs, sixty m
lie lions OF men, women, children, poll
in clans, dudes and other dime-museu
ly freaks are being slowly but sure
e, roasted, boiled, stewed, fried, fries
s. seed and dished up in all the 9th
us styles of sinner-cookery known to {
VI linary orthodoxy. From Maine, t
"a home of The Tattooed Man." to Ca
SIS fornia, and from Michigan to Mexi,
IA the whole continent is one vast, S
n cling, red-hot bake-oyen, with s
&c of glowing brass for lid, and eve
to brick and cobble-stone gleami
nd coal. Simmer sizz-zz-zz roll pitC
in bubble-uble-ublel Whizz-hiss-ss-